Limitless Path

They strode back down to the room, finding the large kobold still waiting for them. It was clear right from the outset that this beast was both faster and much stronger than anything they had faced so far. Beth engaged it immediately after the frost blast, noting that instead of a wooden rod or pole, this beast clutched a massive hunk of lumber in both its frigid, grimy hands. Beth stepped in with her right leg and swung her blade hard, deflecting a fast and powerful smash from the beast's club, feeling the force of the deflection ring through her sword and slightly numb her arms.

The fight was long and grueling, Beth and Blood dancing around the beast for several minutes as they exchanged blows and avoided being flattened by the massive hunk of wood. Things took a bit of a turn for the worse when the boss, enraged by the numerous attacks that had sliced up its limbs, shrieked and exploded with frost, shooting a storm of freezing mana and tiny slivers of ice out around itself. Blood was only able to close her eyes to try to block the blast while Beth leapt back and put her hands up, preventing any ice from getting in her own eyes or mouth.

Ice Resistance Copper[0] acquired.

Well, at least she was seeing some immediate benefits to being coated in frost and ice. She winced a little, feeling where several shards of ice had sliced shallow cuts into her face, the wince turning to a frown as she felt a slightly deeper slice on the right side of her neck. Fortunately for her and Blood, the kobold seemed to get slightly tired after such an immense frost blast, giving them a few seconds to recover before it charged her again. Beth responded by pumping mana into the enchantments on her blade, not just a trickle, but a flood, causing the blade to burst into flame. The fire coated the entire blade and billowed nearly three inches outward, a bright, red flame heating up the entire room. Fire underground was not the best idea, for several reasons, but Beth figured she could make this quick.

She was slightly wrong about that, but the flame did make the kobold go berserk, roaring and rampaging for a time before shooting out more ice. Blood was luckily able to dodge most of the second blast before closing back in, getting a great hit in on the beast's left knee. The damage was really starting to stack up at that point, with the elite kobold slowing considerably, funnily enough for an ice-based beast. It wasn't entirely out of tricks, sending out a third blast of ice before speeding back up, furiously swinging at Beth as it went fully berserk. She was able to go toe-to-toe with it for a time, even getting in a nasty cut on its arm, before she wasn't able to move quickly enough and had to block a heavy swipe with her armored left arm, feeling the bone in her upper arm fracture.

The strike had pulled the elite out of position, the beast staggering down to one knee, a weak position that Beth took advantage of despite her injury. She lashed out, her precise timing and powerful strike coming from some finely honed sense of battle as the heavy ridge of burnished copper over her knuckles crashed into the kobold's skull. There was a sound on the impact like someone had fired an artillery piece right next to her, the force slamming the kobold's head down and to the side at faster than highway speeds. The beast's own retaliatory swing went well wide, missing Beth entirely as its skull smashed into the ground with a thunderous shattering sound, the head of the creature breaking apart the stone and forming a web-work cracked pattern that extended in a two feet radius around it. The blow certainly fractured the skull as well as heavily scrambling its brain, but the beast persisted, scrabbling weakly with its arms as it couldn't quite mentally recover from the strike.

Blood darted in as Beth staggered back, cursing at her cracked knuckles as she kept her eye on the beast. The wolf wasted no time in getting the beast's back and grasping its neck in her jaws, clamping and twisting, tearing flesh while she strained and growled. The kobold's neck was only able to hold up so long, the beast thrashing as its lifeblood spurted out onto the cold floor until, finally, there was a sickening crunch accompanied by a loud *POP*, the beast's neck snapping with a final twist.

The two relaxed after just a moment, receiving the kill confirmation letting them know that the beast was truly dead. Beth had managed to get her eyes cleared and started by dropping her pack in a clear area away from the corpse before reaching up and pulling out the ice shard from her cheek with a wince. Maybe because it was magical ice, or maybe because the dungeon was quite cold, or due to some combination of many factors, the ice wasn't really melting, even exposed to their body heat. Beth set about pulling the bladelike slivers out of her armor and herself before assisting Blood, cleaning out her left side and back. Once the ice was clear, the two were able to sit down and meditate while focusing on regenerating.

Beth was first to finish, even with her gaping cheek wound, as her skill was much stronger. After their earlier discussion with Soph, she knew that was because Regeneration was only a tier one skill while Lordly Reconstruction was at least tier two. The comparative power of the two was a strong indication that her skill might even be tier three, as the rate of her healing even with the skill at copper ranks was pretty phenomenal.

Shaking off thoughts of tiers, Beth reviewed the last few messages while guarding Blood during the wolf's healing. She noted the kill message and the reward of money, smiling a little at the fact that the beast was worth a considerable number of copper coins. Everything in the level forty-one to fifty bracket was worth considerable copper, with fifty being a major turning point where beasts got much stronger but also much more rewarding. She scrolled the rest of the messages, noting a few levels in Ice Resistance for both of them, as well as an overall level. She assigned their free stat points before checking their status screens for the first time in a little while.